How to Enable Impersonation in Microsoft 365 or Exchange Server On-Premises (2024 version)
Impersonation is a way of granting a single Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) or Exchange on-premises account domain-wide access to perform actions on behalf of other users. This is extremely useful when developing an organization-level calendar, contact or task integration within a tenant or between two tenants.
SyncPenguin uses impersonation for domain-wide access in its two-way, one-way, one-to-many and many-to-one syncs. For example, you can sync user calendars between two tenants, or push public folder contacts to all users in the organization. In this article, we explain how to grant user impersonation permission on both Office 365 and Exchange on-premises.
Microsoft 365 (Office 365)
Currently, the best place to configure impersonation in MS 365 is through the Exchange admin center, which can be directly accessed using this link: https://admin.exchange.microsoft.com/. Note that it’s different from the regular M365 admin center. Please ensure you are signed in as an admin user.
Once there, head to the Roles -> Admin roles section and click Add role group.
Next, enter the new role name (e.g. Impersonation) and click Next.
Then search for the ApplicationImpersonation permission, select it, and click Next.
Then you need to select the user or user group that will be given the impersonation permission, and click Next.
Lastly, you need to confirm your choices and click Add role group.
If successful, the following confirmation is shown. Click Done to return to the roles page.
Please note that the role assignment usually takes up to an hour to take effect. If the impersonation is not working right away, please wait a bit and try again later.
Exchange on-premises
If you have access to the Exchange admin center, you can configure the impersonation in the same way as above. Otherwise, it can be done using a PowerShell command.
In the Exchange management shell, run the following command:
New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Name:ROLE_NAME -Role:ApplicationImpersonation -User:ACCOUNT_NAME
As with Office 365, please note that the change usually takes up to an hour to take effect.
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